Do pensions foster education? An empirical perspective

The paper examines the effect of population ageing on public education spending. On the one hand, ageing is expected to have a negative effect on education, as an increasing number of retirees results in ‘intergenerational conflict’ and, hence, the condemnation of education expenditure. On the other hand, ageing, in combination with pay-as-you-go pension systems, offers incentives for the working-age generation to invest in the public education of the young in order to ‘reap’ the benefits (that is, higher income tax/contributions) of their greater future productivity. Empirical evidence derived from the application of a fixed effects approach to panel data for OECD countries shows that the increasing share of elderly people has a non-linear effect on education spending. This indicates a certain degree of intergenerational conflict. Nevertheless, we find that future population ageing, which reinforces the mechanism linking public education and pensions, reflects positively on education expenditure. Furthermore, by disaggregating total education expenditure by educational levels, we observe that this effect is led by levels of non-compulsory education, probably as a reflection of the direct connection to labor productivity.     

城市旧住宅小区管理模式研究

城市旧住宅小区管理模式有物业管理模式、社区管理模式和单位自管模式之分。旧小区管理模式改革和创新是建立政府行政管理与居民(业主)自治管理相结合、社区管理与物业管理相结合的混合型管理模式,其实现途径是加强政府对旧小区管理的领导和支持,充分发挥小区自治组织的作用,积极推行物业管理模式,更新思想观念,提高物业管理服务水平,建立物业管理与社区管理相结合的运作机制,加强法制建理服务设。     

New Labour and Community Protests: the Case of the Govanhill Swimming Pool Campaign, Glasgow

Taking the case study of a community based protest against the closure of a swimming pool in Glasgow, this paper seeks to raise important critical questions about some of the key ideas informing New Labour's urban policy agenda: social capital and active community. It argues that normative notions of active citizenship seriously conflict with bottom-up community protests, highlighting in the process issues of power and inequality. Against claims that New Labour is promoting government through community, here we claim that in the context of this community protest, there was government against community.     

Operations of a Pension Fund after the Asian Crisis: The Thai Experience*

During and after the Asian crisis, institutional investors and pension funds in Asian financial markets have been confronted with a number of difficulties effecting their performance and the way they carry out their role within the national pension system. We analyze these problems by comparing the actual investment policy of an institutional investor with an optimal investment strategy derived from the insights of modern portfolio theory. We also analyze whether the organizational set‐up of a pension fund allows it to adequately perform its role within the pension system. As an example, we examine the operations of the Thai Government Pension Fund (GPF). We find that allowing international investments and reducing restrictions on equity investments while lowering the implicit requirements for investments in government debt would allow the GPF to further diversify its investment risk and to increase its risk‐adjusted return. We also show that some changes in the governance structure of the GPF would lower the occurrence of conflicts of interest for the management and increase the efficiency of the GPF operations.     

Government Deficit, Public Investment, and Public Capital in the Transition to an Aging Japan

This paper examines the effects of government deficits, public investment, and public capital on welfare in the transition to an aging Japan by applying a simulated general equilibrium growth model. One of the main results of this paper is that targeting only high economic growth would mislead us as to economic policies, and that a policy to reduce future government deficits is most preferable for almost all generations, even though a cut in future deficits must be followed by a decrease in public investment, thus a decrease in public capital in the future. J. Japan. Int. Econ., December 2002, 16(4), pp. 462–491. Faculty of Economics, Shiga University, Japan; and Management School, Imperial College, United Kingdom. © 2002 Elsevier Science (USA).Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: H55, H54, H62, C68, J10.     

Consistency of UK Pension Fund Investment Performance

Transition matrix techniques are used to relate the past and present performance of pension fund portfolios. In particular, funds are ranked to study the tendency of portfolios to remain in the same quartile of the ranking as they were in the previous period. For raw returns, funds in both of the top quartiles are found to be more likely to remain in the same quartile than would be expected by chance. This result can be taken as limited evidence for the consistency of performance. Similar systemic effects are observed on a risk-adjusted basis. There appears to be clear evidence that some fund managers can offer a degree of consistent good performance.     

养老基金筹集模式的实证分析

当前的养老制度改革是关注的焦点。本文首先将从介绍现存的筹集模式入手,试图换个角度来思考在人口老龄化背景下的我国养老金基金制度,实证分析模式选择对于缴费率等的影响,并基于此,讨论未来改革的方向。     

企业年金入市对我国资本市场的影响

本文主要论述了企业年金入市时我国资本市场的影响,包括:为资本市场的发展提供长期而稳定的资金来源、促进 资本市场的稳定以及整合各类金融机构。     

Business communities in the European confectionery sector: A U.K.-Finland comparison

This paper is based on the early stages of an international collaborative project investigating the structural changes of the confectionery sectors in Finland and the U.K. over the past two decades. An institutional perspective is used to extend conventional understandings of industries via the development of the sector concept. The network and community constructs are shown to be important devices for understanding the institutional character of a sector. Accordingly, the paper reveals the similarities and differences between the two national examples. An explanation is offered of the way domestic networks persist in both countries while contrasting community profiles are apparent.     

养老保险全国统筹、渐进式延迟退休与基金可持续

基于精算模型分析养老金全国统筹与渐进式延迟退休年龄政策对养老保险基金可持续性的影响,结果显示：全国统筹政策在短期使财政负担下降100%,长期内不能有效降低财政负担。在此基础上实施“女先男后”和“男女同步”渐进式延迟退休年龄政策能分别使养老保险累计财政负担降低6.68%和34.36%。为有效减轻养老保险基金支付压力和财政负担,应完善全国统筹政策,并尽快出台渐进式延迟退休年龄方案。